Creation vs. Evolution

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code_kev
BANANA!

Have no fear swift, I am here.

Excellent. So, care to revisit how "stupid" I sound with the "monkey's uncle" comment? :sly:
 
"We know a song about that, don't we children...?" (zipped mp3 file, please use a virus checker)

Warning: evolutionists may find the lyrics of this song offensive :sly:

Disclaimer: I wash my hands of that mp3, by the way... just to be clear about this!
 
code_kev
Well the monkeys uncle comment is still hardly accurate!

And it still sounds daft.

It may SOUND daft, but this latest news bite that ledhed cited pretty much says that.

Headlines

Link To Article Print Article Email Article
Chimps, humans had complicated breakup
By Matt Crenson, Associated Press



Thursday, May 18
NEW YORK — One of the most detailed comparisons yet of human and chimp DNA shows that the split between the two species was a long, messy affair that may even have featured an unusual evolutionary version of breakup sex.
Previous genetic research has shown that chimpanzees and humans are sister species, having split off from a common ancestor about 7 million years ago. The new study goes farther by looking at approximately 800 times more DNA than earlier efforts.

That additional data make it


possible to determine not just when, but how the split happened.

"For the first time we're able to see the details written out in the DNA," said Eric Lander, one of the collaborators on the study. "What they tell us at the least is that the human-chimp speciation was very unusual."

Unusual, indeed. The researchers, from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, propose that humans and chimpanzees first split up about 10 million years ago. Then, after evolving in different directions for about 4 million years, they got back together for a brief fling that produced a third, hybrid population with characteristics of both lines
 
Man alive, you have sex with a chimpanzee once and even 4 million years later they don't stop giving you grief for it.


(chimpanzee = ape. The ape/monkey split was much earlier)
 
I'm sorry but I still ...well eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeew...is about all I can say on this anymore...a humanid....that saw a chimp and said " hmmm i need to hit that "....and WE come from THAT...????

Like I said it explains bizarre behavior at closing time at the clubs ...but ...still...


EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWW !!!!:crazy:
 
I just discovered this thread, and have now cost my company quite a bit of time in lost productivity. (We're not real busy at the moment, so I can't define "lost" very strictly right now.)

My first exposure to creationism as an actual philosophy was while attending college in a southern state in the US in the mid-70's. I was dating a girl who dropped me without warning when I said that evolution was a proven science. She railed into me about what a heathen I was to doubt the word of God, how could I think my uncle was an ape, yada yada yada. When that mindset became apparent, my attitude changed from "WTF!?!" to "good riddance!" Nonetheless, I was flabbergasted that a modern educated human could believe something like that. Her "facts" were real to her, she had no interest in hearing otherwise. She was "backed" by the word of God, and the "teaching" of her church was all she needed.

There is no fundamental difference between the Creationists' insistence that God created the Earth over a 6-day period some thousands of years ago exactly as we see it today, and the earlier debates between religion and science over the shape of the Earth (it's FLAT, you moron, how can you say it's round, can't you see that God gave us a flat ground?), its location (since we are created in His image, the Earth is the center of all there is - no way does the Earth go around the Sun), and the moons of Jupiter (send that Galileo heretic to prison!!!! No way can a planet have little worlds of its own! It defies God to think so!) It is the same level of ignorance and closed-minded thinking. There is a basic error in the assumption by Creationists that science defies God, and they cannot grasp the notion that science itself (including evolution) is a creation (and tool) of God.

I take issue with the literal interpretation of the Bible as the word of God. I'm sorry, but nobody took dictation. The Bible is a work of literature. It contains allegory, anecdotal lessons, and parables. It also contains rules, laws, commandments. It does not define the Universe, or the origin of species, other than to say that the Earth, animals, and man were "created." The Bible was not written by God, it was written by humans inspired by God, some of whom, unfortunately, had "agendas", and whose understanding of the physical world around them was about the same as a cave man's.

There is no one alive today who can seriously argue that the Earth is the center of all the Universe and that all things move around it, yet within the past millenium you could be imprisoned for publishing anything else. These same people (who insist that evolution is the devil's own work) have no problem "defying" what was once the law of the church. They understand that the Earth goes around the Sun, and that the Sun is just another star in some remote area of a large collection of stars, which itself is remote from other such collections, yet they cannot grasp the notion of evolution as the very tool set up by God to allow for the creation of species.

Knowing the church's history with science (approximately 0 for 146 or so) I am amazed that religious groups continue to have a problem with people wanting to learn more about how stuff actually works. Learning is not heretical, knowing is not sinful, and new ideas are not in defiance of what has been taught before. The religious right continues to teach its children that its "facts" are the "true" facts, there are no other ideas to contemplate, you should not believe, or even listen to, anyone saying anything different, and the only basis you need to believe what we say is that we said it. Folks, that defines Fascism, doesn't it?

(There, that ought to get some people worked up!)
 
wfooshee
I just discovered this thread, and have now cost my company quite a bit of time in lost productivity. (We're not real busy at the moment, so I can't define "lost" very strictly right now.)

[snip snip]
Excellent first post in this thread! It takes courage to come in here and post something that long. Be prepared to defend yourself, though!! (Is that Swift I hear approaching? :sly:)
 
wfooshee,

Thanks for that insightful post! I found myself agreeing more than once! 👍
 
wfooshee
There is a basic error in the assumption by Creationists that science defies God, and they cannot grasp the notion that science itself (including evolution) is a creation (and tool) of God.
I agree with kylehnat, excellent post there 👍 I agree with almost all of it except for the bit I've quoted... my reason is that there really is no evidence that evolution is 'God's tool of creation' either. Although it is a convenient 'hal-way house' argument that should please both sides of the debate, for me it still implies that evolution has at it's core some sort of divine inspiration, a pre-set agenda or 'goals', which it clearly doesn't have. Involving God, invoking supernaturalism or inferring some sort of 'purpose' behind the process of natural selection is the starting point for the intelligent design camp, which for me is a good enough reason to reject it completely...

...but I agree with your point that creationists won't entertain this idea either, which ironically would be a good start for them to do so, since it would show that they atleast accepted that evolution does happen at all...
 
In my view, Intelligent Design is just an adaptation of Creationism using language that they thought would be acceptable to the scientific community. Check that: acceptable to the educational community. It is not science, however, and I suppose they expected most people to miss that small point.
As for the statement you quoted, I did not intend to imply Intelligent Design with that. The big difference, I think, is that Intelligent Design still does not allow for natural selection, or perhaps even evolution per se. They want us to think that everything was created (designed) from similar building blocks, which is why species "can be made to appear" to have descended from other species. Species would have been designed for their niche in nature.
I suppose I'm taking a kind of agnostic view, in that the Universe was created as an abode of life, and that the chemistry of life was put into place, but then allowed to run its course. (That's the tool of God concept.) I don't know if that's a refusal to believe that God will intervene whenever He needs to, or to believe that the Universe can actually be a totally random event. I'm comfortable with a Creator that said "BANG!!! OK, let's see what happens. . ."
 
FERGU$_MANERGU$
Creation always wins in my eyes, im a Christian
Care to elaborate? Why do you believe this? (And "I'm a Christian" doesn't count as a reason. Swift has basically said that 525 times in this thread, but he tends to expand on this idea with actual arguments). Do you think you'll always believe this? When I was 12, I went to church, and basically agreed with everything they said. Ten years later, and my beliefs have changed drastically.
 
FERGU$_MANERGU$
ROLF that is so true man, nice find :lol:

You do realise that I am a staunch evolutionist, and that I only posted that song because I believe it illustrates nicely the completely idiotic attitude of most Creationists? (although thankfully not those you may meet in this thread?) I find the lyrics offensive and pathetic, yet strangely funny as well - although I am not laughing with them, but at them...

I actually found this song as a direct result of watching a BBC (Horizon) documentary about Intelligent Design, and this song was used briefly in the show. I did a quick Google search (for 'anti-evolutionist music') and found it eventually...
 
wfooshee
I'm comfortable with a Creator that said "BANG!!! OK, let's see what happens. . ."

Im pretty close to that too. Though i think some things more suprier, higher up than us may pull some strings every now and again, just like how we can effect animal's habitat without ever seeing them. Same concept really. I cant prove it does happen, and i dont think you can prove it doesnt.
 
That song was awesome TM. It really made me realize that evolution just didn't happen. It can't be true--it's a disgrace to monkeys.

I may have missed something in the lyrics, but that's the only "reason" that I can remember was said. The kids do sound young so I don't figure they think about it a lot, if at all, but I'm sure they could come up with something batter than that.
 
It occurred to me the other day how amazingly potent the human need for explanation really is. Nature has designed us with such a strong instinct for cause and effect, that we can't handle it when we don't know the cause. That makes sense from a survival point of view.

Dead animal? Why?

Is an important question for grog the caveman to ask. Was it the berries? Is it some sort of predator or poisonous snake? Was it disease? These are questions critical to grog's survival and so he must be preoccupied with the cause of the effects he sees. If he isn't, then he might walk right into a bad situation and not get to spread his genetic code (thereby selecting his DNA out of the next generation).

This preoccupation with cause and effect is easily seen today as we try to figure out whether it was our lucky hat that caused the baseball team to hit the home run, or whether there is meaning in the fact that a loved one was killed in a car accident. Random or chaotic events leave us scratching our heads for answers that aren't there - it's part of our instinctual behavior to use our brain to our advantage by searching for answers.

Our search for the cause of the effects we see has lead us to understand evolution. It has lead us to understand the formation of the planet. It even lead us to trace the universe back to a massive event near the beginning of what we've defined as time.

But we haven't figure out what caused the origin of the universe yet. There are fundamental questions like, why are there laws of physics, or why does matter, time, space anything exist at all? These are some of the final questions about the basic chain of events of our universe that we still have to answer. Physicists are probing these questions as we speak, trying to make sense of it all, but we want to know now.

...and so we think it was God.

If you think about what the earth was like in the time of the caveman, it would have been almost impossible not to believe in some sort of mysticism. To the caveman even the rain was an unexplainable phenomenon. To him, fire, or clouds, were magical things. Today we understand these things, but early man had no way to know. It would have taken an impossibly intelligent mind to figure out all of the knowledge necessary to understand these things and not attribute them to magic, or the supernatural.

Later, we understood fire and rain, but we didn't understand simple things like the nature of our planet or the configuration of our solar system. These things may have seemed like daunting tasks. When you think the earth is flat and that the universe revolves around the flat earth, it's hard not to think that there is a God.

But as our knowledge advances, a belief in God becomes easier and easier to let go. At this point, there are only the most fundamental questions that we don't have a decent explanation for. Only the most absolutely basic questions - but we still can't let go of God. It's easier now to think that we'll eventually get answers to those questions than it has been at any point in the history of man, yet we can't seem to make that leap. I'm not talking about a leap of faith in humanity, I'm talking about the leap from mysticism to reality. To finally let go of the supernatural, in recognition of the history of man's knowledge, to finally admit that what is unknown today will be taught in kindergarden tomorrow.

You should all do yourselves a favor and come to peace with the fact that we don't have all of the answers... yet.
 
danoff
But as our knowledge advances, a belief in God becomes easier and easier to let go. At this point, there are only the most fundamental questions that we don't have a decent explanation for. Only the most absolutely basic questions - but we still can't let go of God. It's easier now to think that we'll eventually get answers to those questions than it has been at any point in the history of man, yet we can't seem to make that leap. I'm not talking about a leap of faith in humanity, I'm talking about the leap from mysticism to reality. To finally let go of the supernatural, in recognition of the history of man's knowledge, to finally admit that what is unknown today will be taught in kindergarden tomorrow.

You should all do yourselves a favor and come to peace with the fact that we don't have all of the answers... yet.

This actually goes with something I was thinking about before. But I'll put it in the appropriate thread :)
 
I agree with danoff... you could maybe add some other points like that it is easier and more comfortable to believe in some higher being that is in control of everything than to face brutal reality. A lot of wishful thinking involved so to say...
 
danoff,

Probably not to your surprise, but I have to disagree with your point that the more we know, it should lead us closer to denouncing God's involvement with the universe and accept a non-inspired cataclysmic event of random chance that started the 'creation' of all things. I actually think just the opposite. The more I learn about how things work and about the universe, the more it strengthens my faith in a divine orchestrator of it all. To each his own, eh?
 
Pako
Probably not to your surprise, but I have to disagree with your point that the more we know, it should lead us closer to denouncing God's involvement with the universe and accept a non-inspired cataclysmic event of random chance that started the 'creation' of all things. I actually think just the opposite. The more I learn about how things work and about the universe, the more it strengthens my faith in a divine orchestrator of it all. To each his own, eh?

No, not "to each his own". There is a right and a wrong answer here. This isn't the realm of personal preference. And as long as you continue to mischaracterize the scientific stand as one of "random chance" you're not going to understand the other guy's point of view.
 
danoff
No, not "to each his own". There is a right and a wrong answer here. This isn't the realm of personal preference. And as long as you continue to mischaracterize the scientific stand as one of "random chance" you're not going to understand the other guy's point of view.

It has been a long weekend so I might be a little slow this morning, but how so?
 
danoff
No, not "to each his own". There is a right and a wrong answer here. This isn't the realm of personal preference. And as long as you continue to mischaracterize the scientific stand as one of "random chance" you're not going to understand the other guy's point of view.

Danoff, this is getting old. You say it came from nature and it's not "random" or just "chance". So fine, where did the nature come from? "We don't know yet. But we know it wasn't chance and there's no way it could been created by something or someone else because that doesn't make sense to us."

That's what it all comes down to. I'm trying to figure out how science can say it wasn't chance but at the same time can't explain how it got here.
 
Swift
I'm trying to figure out how science can say it wasn't chance but at the same time can't explain how it got here.

Science is currently silent on the issue of where reality (space, time, matter, physics) came from. It doesn't say chance, and it doesn't say it was created. It simply doesn't say.

Pako
It has been a long weekend so I might be a little slow this morning, but how so?

I've explained many times in this thread and others that evolution and life are not a matter of chance, but a natural consequence of our reality.
 
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